Infant's sweater

Radzinowicz family papers

Document

The Radzinowicz family collection consists of post-war memoirs written by Anatol Radzinowicz describing his experiences in German-occupied Poland during the Holocaust; a diary written in hiding by Zofia Rabinowicz in Bialystok in 1944, after her husband’s arrest; pre-war photographs of their birth families (Rabinowicz and Rozenberg families of Łódź) and post war photographs of their own family; and wartime correspondence from Zofia Radzinowicz’s sister, Estera Rozenberg, sent from the Warsaw ghetto (1940-1941) and from a French internment camp (1943). The Memoirs series contains two typescript texts from Anatol Radzinowicz, “Das Geschenk des Lebens” and “Mój kuzyn Nioma,” both numbering approximately a dozen pages, and attributed to Anatol Rattson, a name that he later used. These writings describe various facets of Radzinowicz’s experiences in occupied Poland, including the role of his cousin Nioma in helping the newlywed Radzinowicz’s after they fled to Bialystok in 1939, as well as the role of the Bagiński family in sheltering Anatol and Zofia following the liquidation of the Bialystok ghetto. The Photographs series contains pre-war photographs of the Rabinowicz and Rozenberg families, including childhood images of Anatol and Zofia, family portraits, and images of siblings, while the post-war photographs show them with their two daughters in Poland, primarily between the end of the war and the early 1950s. Also included is a photo of the Bagiński house in Bialystok and the Radzinowicz’s two daughters posing with Ludmiła Bagińska in the early 1960s. The Zofia Radzinowicz series consists of the diary pages that she wrote while in hiding, addressed in the second person to Anatol, who she feared had been killed after his capture by the Gestapo. The Estera Rozenberg series consists largely of postcards sent by her, but often with inscriptions and greetings from other family members and friends, from the Warsaw ghetto in 1940-1941, to a friend in Łódź, Irena Wojdysławska. Also included is a letter that Estera wrote from the Vittel internment camp in France, after she had married Abraham Horenstein and had been sent there in 1943 with a group of other people who were hoping to immigrate to Honduras, but were ultimately unsuccessful. This letter is addressed to a relative in Palestine, and asks him for support, including sending needed clothing.